Canadian micro-publisher Spectacular Optical is pleased to announce a new book focused on the career of French fantasy and horror filmmaker Jean Rollin, LOST GIRLS: THE PHANTASMAGORICAL CINEMA OF JEAN ROLLIN, edited by Samm Deighan and penned by all women critics, scholars and film historians. Set to be released in the summer of 2017, this collection of essays covers the wide range of Rollin’s career from 1968’s LE VIOL DU VAMPIRE through his 2010 swansong, LE MASQUE DE LA MÉDUSE, touching upon his horror, fantasy, crime and sex films—including many lesser seen titles. The book closely examines Rollin’s core themes: his focus on overwhelmingly female protagonists, his use of horror genre and exploitation tropes, his reinterpretations of the fairy tale and fantastique, the influence of crime serials, Gothic literature and the occult, as well as much more.

“Lost Girls is an exquisite book about the acclaimed French film director Jean Rollin, a master of the surreal and the poetic, whose classic films with their haunting images embody a dark playful female aesthetic. The essays in this fine collection capture Rollin’s love of the supernatural, the dreamlike, poetic gore and female vampirism – to mention a few of themes that Rollin subjects to his strange subversive eye. This outstanding collection pays tribute to Rollin’s world of surreal fairy tales, sadean narratives and disturbing journeys into the dark side of the soul. Lost Girls is a must for lovers of the cinematic underworld in which female characters reign supreme.” – Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis

“No serious student of the cinefantastique will want to be without this beautifully illustrated collection of essays dedicated to the eerie, sensual cinema of Jean Rollin.” – Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento

The book features a foreword by Françoise Pascal, the star of Rollin’s beloved La rose de fer, and cover art by Jessica Seamans, known for her work with Landland and posters for MONDO.

Printed Matter is pleased to announce the publication of Network, an artists’ project by Nicolas Jaar, co-published with his label Other People. Designed by Jena Myung and Maziyar Pahlevan, the book is the culmination of a multi-phase project from Jaar which takes the form of an online, semi-fictitious network of interlocking radio stations built around chance operations.

Network, like the web-based radio network which precedes it, is conceived in thirds and built from three primary threads:

iii. Loose transcriptions of each radio program, comprised of sprawling text culminating in a full-color section of manipulated images.

Invited in 2015 by the BBC to participate in a 6-month residency, Jaar instead set out to write a radio play which positioned an invented DJ at the helm of his own residency inside a fake BBC-style radio world. The program was ultimately deemed too far out and never realized. In its place Jaar approached programmer Cole Brown to collaboratively devise http://other-people.network, a website which would host the programs on continuous loop inviting users to sift through the stations with a radio like dial – and later – a random number inputting system, 1-333.

The stations are made up of more than 20 hours of Jaar’s own mixes as well as original music, among them his recently released album Sirens – the remaining are constructed “fakes”, conceptual audio works created with the help of voice actors. Billionaire FM counts down and offers commentary on the annual Forbes list of world’s top billionaires one by one. MATTA CLARK DEMOLITIONS is comprised of “noises” gathered from the structures which artist Gordon Matta Clark transformed into architectural cut-ups. Red Bull Sponsored Revolutions plays Mozart 24/7.

In its form and content, Network gives theoretical consideration to the inherent political possibilities of radio broadcast. The contributed texts and transcribed radio-chatter that filter through the book offer ways of resistance against entrenched power-structures (of political systems, of the mega-wealthy). Resistencia de Ayer Es La Resistencia de hoy, a station which plays exclusively Latin American Resistance music from the 60-70s, is one such example, though the work of the project is more broadly interested in the model/mechanism itself, a distribution system (in radio and publications alike) which is capable of operating ‘underground’, through pirate channels, and outside the reach of the State. Nicolas Jaar’s Network is looking for word of the revolution, but guarded against the fear it may come Red Bull-sponsored.

Network is 8 x 11 inches, 336 pages, otabound with smythe sewn signatures. The publication features fore-edge printing and includes a half-sheet bookmark. It is printed on 120 gsm Munken Polar Rough, in a first edition of 1100 copies.

Heartworm is proud to release our edition of Richard Brautigan’s eighth poetry book publication, Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt.

First published in 1970, Rommel Drives On DeepInto Egypt is a collection of eighty-five primitive poems full of the innovation, wit, style and anti-intellectualism that became a signature that only Brautigan could achieve. Often imitated, never duplicated.

“Have You Ever Had a Witch Bloom like a Highway”
Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?

Robert Novak wrote in Dictionary of Literary Biography that “Brautigan is commonly seen as the bridge between the Beat Movement of the 1950s and the youth revolution of the 1960s.” A so-called guru of the sixties counterculture, Brautigan wrote of nature, life, and emotion; his unique imagination provided the unusual settings for his themes. Critics frequently compared his work to that of such writers as Thoreau, Hemingway, Barthelme, and Twain.” Richard Brautigan died in 1984 at age 49.